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HA-HA, OH WELL
Gang I’m gonna give it to you straight: fed up with sinus nonsense brought on by January’s brumal wiles, I sliced and fried up some spicy sausage in my trusty skillet, cracked a coupla chickenfruit in there, and now I’m running unopposed for mayor of Noserun Falls, Free Country USA.
Interestingly, as I write this we’re watching an episode of Northern Exposure wherein Cicely, Alaska’s first mayoral election in twenty years takes place, and it leads me to the somewhat uncomfortable realization that my beliefs regarding leadership in the workplace and in government are nearly complete opposites.
In the workplace, and I say this as one who has been a leader and been led, I believe that the purest, most effective form of leadership is extraordinary support: giving people the tools they need to do their jobs, letting them do it the way that makes sense to them as long as it gets done right, making sure they know you have their backs, and getting the hell out of the way. I don’t want to be micromanaged or told how to do my job by someone who isn’t also doing it; I’ve been hired to do the thing, let me do the thing, and if I need help I’ll let you know, that’s why you have the job you do.
In questions of politics, I would love to be able to take a similar position, but we’ve seen what happens when that attitude is applied to the governance of the people: the unscrupulous and greedy take every advantage of the poor and disempowered, who have their avenues of recourse sold out from under them by slightly more powerful people in hopes of becoming one of the big fish. Capitalism is an economic model, not a governmental one, but small, conservative administration of government is the capitalist equivalent: not just conducive to exploitation and corruption but requiring them in order to maintain the supremacy of the ruling body, viewing the people as a resource to be consumed instead of a sacred animal to honored and protected, and actively cultivating a system in which to help another without accruing profit is called unamerican.
So I wish I could believe in the idea of small government and hands-off leadership, but America is clearly still a trainee who needs supervision; you look away for a moment and they’ve taken this ‘deregulation’ idea they were excited about so far overboard that chemical plants explode, the doors fly off of airplanes mid-flight, and Flint Michigan’s tapwater burns.
The critical difference, from my perspective, is that if I ask for a hands-off supervision experience and it goes terribly wrong, the only one inconvenienced is me; when the people who move the machinery of our government and society are insufficiently managed, my wife loses her goddamn reproductive agency.
Grumble1, etc.
And now, bummed out, I go play Chained Echoes until it’s time for bed. Good night, and good luck.